How do you take care of your roots?

Paradise Is Now is part of an evening-length solo work. It incorporates what I’ve learned over the past two years from NOURISH—a project serving Black Mothers, Cambridge & Lexington families, and the Boston dance community.

NOURISH at LexFarm involved learning about untold histories of my neighborhood’s historic farmland. Naturally, my outdoor farm dancing needed to transplant to an indoor marley floor. . . This got me thinking about the history of the land in Kendall Square at Complex @ Canal, where developed the piece. The Canal district of Kendall Square, Cambridge used to be marshland along the brackish Charles River. The industrial shipping of the 1700’s required construction of canals, so imports could be offloaded further inland. Moreover, I’m premiering an excerpt this piece at the ICA Boston in the newly developed Seaport District, engineered over the Atlantic shoreline. It struck me. Strange to be dancing on landfill.

To ground me, I’m borrowing from home my mother’s Sansevieria plant. My grandmother got when she gave birth to her youngest son, my Uncle Vern. He’s now 71. My mother has been caring for this plant since my grandmother died. It’s now quite large! I credit my mother for the plant’s vitality; she credits the plant itself for continuing to thrive. I’m honored to be able to dance with this legacy plant, a reminder to appreciate the care and privilege my family affords me to be able to make art today.

This Sansevieria plant is also called Snake plant, or Mother In Law’s Tongue. My ex-mother-in-law died recently. She was 90; her tongue was sweet, and full of kindness.

In this solo I relate the plants that grew up with me with the displacement and isolation I’ve been combating while socially distancing. Houseplants are potted in peat, largely imported from Canada, because it absorbs moisture better than dirt or compost. Most domestic houseplants are transplanted and cultivated from their native soils, but grown in greenhouses.  Through my NOURISH research, I’ve been figuring out how to get grounded on landfill. How to reaccredit the people who thrived on this land for thousands of years. How to make a home where my family and I can thrive. How to awaken people’s senses and sense of infinite potential. How to help other people to sense, feel, and move better. How to recognize our own innate power to bloom, despite the inhospitable circumstances of this pandemic.

My answers are in this dance,

Paradise is Now.